No, naivete of youth is how people end up buying 5 BMWs the minute they upgrade. There is nothing cunning about living within one's means. I'll grant you it's not terribly fashionable anymore, but it's certainly not cunning.
If you refer to me personally, that's quite insulting as well as being totally incorrect. I come from a very modest background and have
always known how to live within my means. I have no debts or loans. We live in a modest house and have always done most of the work on it myself to save money - I learned DIY out of necessity.
I have always put money aside for retirement and a bit more for a rainy day - when there's been some to spare, that is. There hasn't always been money to spare, certainly not in the days of 15% mortgage rates, which financially crippled many of my generation (watch out you youngsters with big mortgages if those days ever come back - the rate went from 6.5% to 15% almost overnight. Then we'll really find out who is living beyond their means)!
But I do need to keep working as long as I can, and I will, because pensions are worth far less now than those earned by previous generations. If working my backside off to keep my family is seen as at the "unfair expense" of someone who thinks he's more entitled to my salary than I am - well, that's life.
As for BMWs...I have owned three. Only one at a time, though. The first was chosen from a bunch of old bangers, I needed it to drive to work. It cost me £1200 and I ran it for three years and sold it for £800. When it needed maintenance, I did it myself. The other two were five or six years old when I bought them and bought for less than half of the new price. One served me for eight years, the other for seven years. The last time I took out a loan for a car was in 1979 and it was for about £600. I traded in my beloved sports car and bought a four door saloon not long after I got married.
What's more - we shop at Aldi, not Harrods!
